WSUSA execs’ letter to the editor

Marc DeYoung, WSUSA vice president of clubs and organizations. (Source: Weber State University Student Involvement and Leadership)

With the support of my fellow Weber State executives, I am writing this editorial in order to clarify any confusion as to why we as student leadership have ethically and legally closed our meetings to the attendance of reporters and photographers from the Weber State Signpost.

Just like our United States government, your student governing body of Weber State is served by three branches: a legislative branch, a judicial branch, and an executive branch. Our legislative branch, also known as the student senate, proposes, deliberates, and establishes policies which direct the allocation and use of your student fees. We as an executive team, just like a US presidential cabinet, must work within the parameters Senate votes upon to use your student fees to create programming that we feel would be beneficial to the greatest number of students. Just like a United States senate meeting, any member of the public, or student in this case, is welcome and encouraged to attend our Senate meetings to know what is going on and to have a voice in the allocation of your student fees. However, just as though the media or any other citizen cannot mosey on over to the White House and attend one of Barack Obama’s cabinet meetings, the same standard applies for your Weber State student executive meetings.

In these meetings, the primary discussions center around event ideas, planning, and reports on execution. Generally, what we are discussing is in such an infant stage of its development, that it would not be beneficial to have the Signpost there reporting on it. We are happy to have their reporters, and any student for that matter, come to our events to see and report on the final outcomes. Reporters and students are also welcome and encouraged to drop by our offices in SU 326 to ask questions of any of us and find out exactly what we are working on. Our executive meetings are a time for those of us you elected to come together and figure out how to overcome the problems and roadblocks we face in order to design the best year possible for our fellow students. In this meeting we are afforded a certain level of confidentiality in order to feel safe and comfortable in discussing those roadblocks without fear they will wind up on the front page news.

Again, just as the United States executor, the President, informs us of his closed door decisions through press conferences and releases, we as executives would love to take any questions you have through email, a phone call, or a face to face meeting.